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Udacity

I am very happy to find this awesome course of “Deep Learning” now . It is the course which is provided by Google through Udacity(1), one of the biggest mooc platforms in the world. So I would like to share it to any person who are interested in “Deep Learning”.

It is the first course which explains Deep Learning from Logistic regression to Recurrent neural net (RNN) in the uniformed manner on mooc platform as far as I know. I looked at it and was very surprised how awesome the quality of the course is. Let me explain more details.

1. We can learn everything from Logistic regression to RNN seamlessly

This course covers many important topics such as logistic regression, neural network, regularization, dropout, convolutional net, RNN and Long short term memory (LSTM). These topics are seen in some articles independently before. It is however very rare to explain each of them at once in the same place. This course looks like a story of development of Deep Learning. Therefore, even beginners of Deep Learning can follow the course. Please look at the path of the course. It is taken from the course video of L1 Machine Learning to Deep Learning .

Especially, explanations of RNN are very easy to understand. So if you do not have enough time to take a whole course, I just recommend to watch the videos of RNN and related topics in the course. I am sure it is worth doing that.

2. Math is a little required, but it is not an obstacle to take this course

This is one of the courses in computer science. The more you understand math, the more you can obtain insights from the course. However, if you are not so familiar with mathematics, all you have to do is to overview basic knowledge of “vectors”, “matrices” and “derivatives”. I do not think you need to give up the course because of the lack of knowledge of math. Just recall high school math, then you can start this awesome course!

3. “Deep learning” can be implemented with “TensorFlow“, which is open source provided by Google

This is the most exciting part of the course if you are developers or programmers. TensorFlow is a python-based language. So many developers and programmers can be familiar with TensorFlow easily. In the program assignments, participants can learn from simple neural net to sequence to sequence net with TensorFlow. It must be good! While I have not tried TensorFlow programming yet, I would like to do that in the near future. It is worth doing that even though you are not programmers. Let us challenge it!

In my view, Deep Learning for sequence data is getting more important as time series data are frequently used in economic analysis, customer management and internet of things. Therefore, not only data-scientists, but also business personnel, company executives can benefit from this course. It is free and self-paced when you watch the videos. If you need a credential, small fee is required. Why don’t you try this awesome course?

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I have started Front-End web developer course of Nanodegrees in Udacity this week. I would like to obtain the skills of front-end web development, such as a website and mobile service because I would like to develop websites and mobile services, which are backed by machine learning. So I am going to set up the prototype website on Microsoft Azure and use visual studio online for writing codes of HTML, CSS and Java script. When I learn methods to write the codes in Nanodegrees, I try to use these methods to develop the prototype website on Microsoft Azure. I think it is good because I can learn the methods of wiring codes through Nanodegrees and develop my websites on Microsoft Azure at the same time.

As I said before, Nonodegrees focus on industries practices and applications for jobs. It looks like an open training on the job. It introduces a project based method, where participants should make several web sites by themselves according to instructions. I hope I can develop websites by writing HTML, CSS and Java script by the end of this course.

Actually, it is my first online course, which is required to pay for. It costs 200 USD per month. I took more than 10 MOOCs (massive open online courses) in Coursera and Edex before. Unlike Nanodegrees, these courses are free so I do not pay any fee at all. Most courses in Coursera and an Edex are provided by professors of the universities. So Nanodegrees are contrasted to Coursera and Edex, which are major providers of MOOCs. I would like to explain what the difference is between Nanodegrees and other free courses going forward.

I want to make it a kind of parallel processing to develop websites and mobile services. When new methods of developing of websites and mobile services are provided through Nanodegrees, I will deploy prototype websites on Microsoft Azure at the same time. In addition to that, the project to develop recommender engines is going on in my company and the prototype engine will be expected to be developed within this year. This engine will be combined with the websites to enhance their services. I think it might be possible as Microsoft Azure has machine learning as a service.

This is a scheme to set up the platform to develop websites and mobile service backed by machine learning. Front-end developer course of Nanodegrees in Udacity might make it possible even for beginners like me. I hope this program keeps a high standard to provide skills and methods to participants so that everyone thinks it is worth paying fees to participate in this course. I am sure Sebastian Thrun, CEO and cofounderof Udacity makes it happen.